


I am at rest with you

by leupagus



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 23:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19877545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/pseuds/leupagus
Summary: “One of these days, you’ll listen to the doctor when she tells you to lift with your knees,” David says. He gets up, taking Patrick’s empty glass with him. “Do you want some more orange juice, or would you rather just skip to combining liquor and pills?” There’s a pause from the direction of the kitchen. “Oh, god, Twyla left the cake here.”





	I am at rest with you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/gifts).



> Title taken from Dorothy L. Sayers's "Busman's Honeymoon."

Patrick can hear the door close, and he _thinks_ there’s a quiet sigh that follows it, but he’s not sure. “David?” he calls from where he’s been deposited on the couch, surrounded by pillows.

“Coming,” and a few moments later he comes into Patrick’s line of sight, adjusting his glasses and fussing at his hair with the same sweep of his hand. “How’re you feeling, hon?”

He looks tired, and Patrick’s gut clenches around his own guilt, which of course sends another spasm of lightning-bright pain up his spine. David must see the flinch because he’s sitting down on the coffee table next to Patrick’s side, brows furrowed. “It’s fine, I’m okay,” Patrick tells him, but David looks unconvinced.

“I told you inviting my mother meant she’d swap out your codeine for aspirin,” he says, his mouth curling up even as he searches Patrick’s face. “Are you sure you don’t want another pill? Or one of Stevie’s edibles?”

“All I need is you,” Patrick says, which gets him an eye-roll. “I’m sorry about today,” he adds.

“Sorry” really doesn’t encompass the past few hours. It hadn’t _started_ badly; Patrick had gotten up at five-thirty as usual, gone for his run, come home to a still-sleepy David mumbling into the pillows but willing go wake up just enough for his anniversary blowjob, carding his hands through Patrick’s hair and still incoherent but very enthusiastic. Marriage was all about compromise, and Patrick learned years ago that the best way to get David up before nine o’clock was with either sex or high-quality espresso.

They’d stumbled into the shower, David’s hands impatient and demanding, slipping into Patrick while he braced himself against the tiles, David whispering filth into his shoulder as he shivered and came. They’d gotten dried and gotten dressed, Patrick’s list of to-dos before the party that afternoon updated on his phone — and then he’d bent over to pick up the paper on the doorstep and heard a very, very ominous noise.

“One of these days, you’ll listen to the doctor when she tells you to lift with your knees,” David says. He gets up, taking Patrick’s empty glass with him. “Do you want some more orange juice, or would you rather just skip to combining liquor and pills?” There’s a pause from the direction of the kitchen. “Oh, god, Twyla left the cake here.”

Patrick makes a face. The party probably wouldn’t have lasted all that long anyway, with Patrick greeting everyone awkwardly from his prone position and David getting steadily more anxious about how Mandy was doing unsupervised (“she’s twenty-five, David, she’s not going to burn the store down.” “Right but she _could_ , maybe I should call her and remind her where the fire extinguishers are.” “We have more than one?” “Patrick, we have seven _in our house_ , and I love the store _much_ more than our house”). But Twyla’s cake had ensured a quick departure from the guests, mostly due to some pretty impressive food poisoning.

“Is your dad’s barf going to come out of that carpet?” Patrick asks. “If not, I think we can just go to Elmdale and get another one.”

“Let’s do that,” David replies from the dining room. There’s some dramatic grunting and heaving noises, and Patrick gets to watch David grappling with the unfortunate carpet in question as he traipses past on his way out the back. “I’m definitely invoicing him for it.”

“Invoice Twyla, maybe,” Patrick mutters.

David’s phone starts blaring from the coffee table; Alexis’s ringtone. Patrick makes a bid for it, but his back is still not too keen on anything that requires actual movement, and David’s already there, scowling. “Yes hi still not a good time!” he hisses as he answers.

“I just wanted to wish him a happy anniversary, _ugh_!” Alexis’s tinny voice comes through. “I’m _trying_ to be a good sister-in-law.”

“Well, Ted’s the one who actually remembered, so,” David says, but he thrusts the phone at Patrick, who makes a face that he really hopes conveys _I literally can’t move my arms without pain_. It does, miraculously, and David heaves an enormous sigh but puts the phone to Patrick’s ear. “Do _not_ let her start talking about quokkas again,” he warns.

“Hi, Alexis, thanks for the well wishes,” Patrick says, and hmm-hmm’s through about five minutes’ recap of Alexis and Ted’s Excellent Adventure; Tasmania is incredible, the beaches are beautiful and the people are so… _interesting_ , is what she lands on, which is enough to make Patrick’s eyebrows go up.

“Anyways, should probably let you guys get back to it, it’s _super_ early here but we’re heading out to go snorkeling with—“

“Okay bye!” David says, and hangs up. Patrick wonders if laughing at his husband will hurt his back. Probably. “You’re too nice to her,” David tsks, putting the phone on the charger pad and sitting back down, this time on the couch next to Patrick’s hip. It shifts the cushion and sends a twinge along Patrick’s right side, but he’s not about to complain. “So,” David continues, “You had a really lovely day planned out for us, didn’t you?”

“Kind of a running theme in our relationship,” Patrick admits. If he moves his arm very, very slowly, he can put it on David’s thigh, thumb rubbing a sweet circle on the outer seam of his jeans. “We plan something romantic and it all goes awry. Remember Rattlesnake Point?”

“Remember our _wedding_?” David counters, lacing their fingers together. “ _And_ our five-year anniversary.”

Patrick winces. “Thanks, I’d almost blocked that out,” he says. “And our honeymoon?”

“No, I _don’t_ remember our honeymoon, and that’s because I was _extremely_ out of it due to the _mono_. Which _you gave me_ ,” David says, like it’s some big reveal and not the same story he’s been complaining about for ten years, the story that Patrick literally lived through.

“In my defense,” he says, for what’s probably the thousandth time, “I didn’t think you could get mono from a water fountain.”

“A water fountain _in New York_!” David argues, grinning and waving his free hand around, and Patrick loves him so much, loves the rhythm of their bickering and the way David can’t help smiling through it, eyes shining. “It’s going to be another ten years before I forgive you for being asymptomatic while I _slept_ through our entire trip.”

“Also in my defense, that part was really, really funny,” Patrick replies. After a day spent watching TV in their suite while David slept, he’d abandoned his brand-new husband to play tourist, pausing for strategic selfies with David’s _WILD ALOOF REBEL_ sweatshirt he’d stolen at various attractions: the Empire State Building, the Highline, the Brooklyn Bridge. He’d come back to the hotel once or twice a day, David either passed out or groggily happy to see him, pawing hopefully at his crotch before falling asleep again. Not the most romantic week he’s ever spent with David, but there had still been something magical about it, wandering around David’s old home to come home to him every night, wrapped up in his arms as the city grumbled beneath them.

The night when David was finally awake enough to scroll through Patrick’s picture log, almost two months later, had been amongst the most hilarious of Patrick’s life. A few of the better pictures — Patrick holding the sweatshirt like a flag with the Statue of Liberty in the background, Patrick with one sleeve draped around his shoulders in the middle of Times Square — were put in their wedding album against David’s strong protests, but Patrick won the argument by pointing out that at least in those pictures David didn’t have to worry about whether his hair was looking weird or the angle was off.

“Anyway,” says David, fending off the rest of the argument, “What I’m saying is, I’m glad today didn’t work out. If things started going right on our anniversary, I would’ve panicked.”

“Thank you,” Patrick says heavily. David beams at him and gets back to his feet; this time Patrick doesn’t try to hide the grimace. “So about mixing alcohol and pain meds.”

“Nice try,” David says, grabbing the remote. The game comes on, recorded from earlier in the day. “Now shut up and suffer, I’m going to check on Mandy and get a pizza on the way home.” He kisses Patrick on the forehead and bustles out before Patrick can protest.

He’s back before the seventh inning stretch, full of faint praise for Mandy’s handling of some obstreperous customer and juggling two very large pizzas from the new place on South Main. Patrick offers his opinions about how the employee training is going, which David studiously ignores as he feeds Patrick slices of pepperoni and Hawaiian.

The rest of the evening is spent quietly enough; they check on the guests-slash-victims of Twyla’s cake, who are apparently doing okay if not great. Stevie texts them a picture of her hand, middle finger extended. “So she’s fine,” David determines. Mr. and Mrs. Rose are mostly recovered but staying in for the evening, making plans to stop by tomorrow morning before their flight.

Mom calls to wish them a happy anniversary, although the conversation veers into her planned trip to Lisbon next month with her “very nice friend” Howard, who David is deeply indifferent to but who also called Patrick a couple weeks ago, stammering through a request for his blessing, and who’s made Mom happier than she’s been in almost six years. “I still think she can do better,” David mutters when they hang up the phone; Patrick informs him that the Brewers are notorious settlers, which makes David squint at him and remind him who’s got control of the codeine. He dozes for a bit, cocooned in the sounds of David puttering around their house, double-bagging the poison cake and putting away the dishes, fussing with the laundry and arguing with a vendor who has the gall to phone on a Saturday.

He wakes up when David starts tugging at the cushions at the back of the couch. “Wha?” he croaks, scrunching his eyes shut and opening them wide. “Time is it?”

“Time for bed,” David replies in the twilight. “And let this be a measure of my very deep and profound love for you that I’m making a couch exception here.” He’s already in his pajamas, Patrick realizes, and his cock gives a hopeful twitch as David awkwardly climbs over him to snuggle in between him and the back of the couch. “And before you ask, no, you’re not getting your anniversary present tonight.”

“You got yours,” Patrick protests, but hopeful twitch or not, they have a bad track record with back injuries and blowjobs.

“I’ll give you an IOU,” says David, curling a careful arm over his stomach.

“In writing,” Patrick insists. “I’m going to invoice you.”

“Oh my god, go to _sleep,_ you insane horndog.”

“Give me my phone, I’m going to write it up now—“

“I want a divorce—“

“Item: one blowjob, due at termination of back injury—“

David makes a loud grinding noise in the back of his throat and climbs over him again, stomping off to the kitchen. “Divorce!” he yells. “Divorce and I’m taking you for everything you’ve got, Brewer!”

“You _are_ my everything!” Patrick calls back. “Wait, does everything include that blowjob? Because I don’t technically have it, so—“

“I’m writing it out and putting it on the fridge,” David shouts, “And you’re just going to have to trust that it’s there until your broken little butt can hobble in here and see, because _marriage_ , Patrick, is about _trust_ , and _trusting_ me to give you anniversary fellatio _as promised_.”

He’s stomped back into the living room by now, clambering back into his spot and angrily cuddling again, and Patrick was right; it hurts to laugh.

It’s worth it.


End file.
